The book of Tobit is my favorite OT book, but I've gotta admit that it has a lot in there that seems very peculiar. Some of it deals with interpretation of a seemingly plain passage, while other passages I just don't get at all. If y'all would like to discuss some of the stuff in it, I'd love to hear what you all think. Anyway, how about I throw out something and if anyone's up for a discussion on this book, throw your 2 cents in...
For no pagan nation possesses good counsel, but the Lord himself gives all good things. - Tob. 4:17
This verse seems interesting on a number of counts. God is obviously the source of all goodness (Matt. 19:17; James 1:17; Ps. 16:2), but we don't see this affirmed as much in Scripture as we might think it would be. That in itself makes this an important verse. But the verse also seems to say that outside the Jewish nation, there is no "good counsel," which would obviously be false if we were to take it literally. (Jaroslav Pelikan goes over the issue of truth outside Judaism/Christianity pretty well in the first volume of his five volume work on the Catholic Tradition.)
I'd like to make a suggestion for understanding this passage, let me know how far off base you think I am. I suggest we view the verse typologically. The type is "Israel and the other nations," and I think the antitype would be "The [Orthodox] Church and the other [so-called Christian] churches". It would have been wrong to say that no one except Israel had any truth, but certainly Israel was God's chosen method of bringing His will about, and Israel was the protector of God's revelation, and the instrument of God's grace. All the other nations had, at best, a pale, pieced-together understanding of what Israel knew (or should have known). This, then, anticipates God's Israel in the latter days: the Church. Today the Church is the protector of God's revelation, the instrument of his grace, etc. And in the same way, those outside the Church can only have a pale, pieced-together understanding of the truth. God gives all good things, and chooses the majority of the time to work through his theanthropic body on earth, the Church: this is how it was in former times with the literal-ethnic Israel as well.
